page_title: Trencher (tableware)
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Trencher (tableware) / Literature
caption_attribution_description: Britain Loves Wikipedia at the Victoria and Albert Museum Deutsch: TranchierbrettEnglish: TrencherFrançais&#160;: Tranchoir English: Trencher probably 1500-1700; England Square trencher, of unpainted beech or sycamore, with a large, central, circular depression (with concave moulded edge) and at one corner a small turned circular depression (for salt). With minor surface, abrasions and a dark applied finish (such as shellac and blacking). Before about 1500, trenchers were made of large sections of bread, usually several days old, which took the place of individual plates. Diners filled their trenchers with food from large platters placed in the centre of the table. By the end of the fifteenth century, however, particularly in northern Europe, trenchers were more commonly made of wood or pewter, and wooden trenchers remained in use into the 19th century alongside pottery plates. Salt could be placed in the small cavity at one corner of this trencher. Although this trencher was probably turned on a pole-lathe of the type used in medieval England, the lack of wear on it suggests that it may have been made as late as the 18th century, or possibly later as a replica object. Collection ID: 702B-1891 This photo was taken as part of Britain Loves Wikipedia in February 2010 by David Jackson.
context_page_description: A trencher is a type of tableware, commonly used in medieval cuisine. A trencher was originally a flat round of bread used as a plate, upon which the food could be placed to eat. At the end of the meal, the trencher could be eaten with sauce, but was more frequently given as alms to the poor. Later the trencher evolved into a small plate of metal or wood, typically circular and completely flat, without the lip or raised edge of a plate. Trenchers of this type are still used, typically for serving food that does not involve liquid; the cheeseboard is perhaps the most common type in the West.
context_section_description: In Virgil's Aeneid, trenchers are the object of a prophecy. In bk.3, Aeneas recounts to Dido how after a battle between the Trojans and the Harpies, Calaeno, chief of the Furies, prophesied to him (claiming to have the knowledge from Apollo) that he would finally arrive in Italy, but
  Never shall you build your promised city
  
  Until the injury you did us by this slaughter
  
  Has brought you to a hunger so cruel
  
  That you gnaw your very tables.
  The prophecy is fulfilled in bk.7, when the Trojans eat the trenchers after a frugal feast. Aeneas' son Ascanius jokes that they are so hungry they would have eaten the tables, at which point Aeneas realises that the prophecy has been fulfilled. However, he reattributes the prophecy to his deceased father, Anchises:
  I now can tell you, my father Anchises
  
  Revealed these secrets to me for he said:
  
  "When you have sailed, son, to an unknown shore
  
  And, short of food, are driven to eat your tables,
  
  Then, weary though you are, hope you are home
  This episode is alluded to in Allen Tate's poem "The Mediterranean", although Tate calls them "plates".
  The Middle Ages, Everyday Life in Medieval Europe by Jeffrey L. Singman (Sterling publishers) offers the following observation: "The place setting also included a trencher, a round slice of bread from the bottom or the top of an old loaf, having a hard crust and serving as a plate.  After the meal, the sauce-soaked trenchers were probably distributed to servants or the poor.  Food was served on platters, commonly one platter to two diners, from which they transferred it to their trenchers."
  Shakespeare used the term in at least eleven of his plays.
  The term appears commonly throughout George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, such as this excerpt from A Dance with Dragons:
  The beer was brown, the bread black, the stew a creamy white. She served it in a trencher hollowed out of a stale loaf.
caption: Wooden trencher
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